H1N1: BMJ Medical Experts Debunk Tamiflu effectiveness and usage

The ongoing investigation of antiviral drugs and their unproven effectivenesss continues.

UK medical experts from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) are questioning the effectiveness of antiviral drug Tamiflu commonly used against the swine flu virus spreading across the globe, according to a study reported in Britain Tuesday.

An investigation by the British Medical Journal acknowledges that the drug oseltamivir, which trades as Tamiflu, has "a very modest effect in reducing flu symptoms and infectivity in otherwise healthy adults."

But "researchers say there is insufficient published data to know if oseltamivir reduces complications in otherwise healthy adults," the media groups said in a joint statement.

The use of flu drugs like oseltamivir has increased dramatically since the A(H1N1), or swine flu, pandemic began in April 2009, with government rushing to stockpile treatments while persuading people to have vaccinations.

The global death toll since the virus was uncovered in April approached 8,770 in early December, with confirmed infections in 207 countries, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Claims about the effectiveness of drugs like Tamiflu against flu complications have been a key factor in governments' choosing to spend millions of dollars to hoard them, the British Medical Journal said.

The British government has spent about 500 million pounds (813.9 million dollars) on such drugs, they said.

But research on the drugs by scientists from Australia's Bond University was hampered by a "paucity of good data" available from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche that produces oseltamivir.

"As a result, they conclude that they have no confidence in claims that oseltamivir reduces the risk of complications of influenza in otherwise healthy adults, and believe it should not be used in routine control of seasonal influenza."

The researchers called on governments to set up studies to monitor the safety of drugs like Tamiflu, which are called neuraminidase inhibitors.

A team from the University of Birmingham concluded meanwhile that oseltamivir may reduce the risk of pneumonia in otherwise healthy people who contract flu.

"However, the absolute benefit is small, and side effects and safety should also be considered," the statement said.

Professor Nick Freemantle from the University of Birmingham said he saw "very little evidence to support the widespread use of oseltamivir in the otherwise healthy population who are developing signs of influenza-like illness."

"We have remarkably few resources in this country to spend on pharmaceuticals on health and it's surprising to see such widespread use of oseltamivir," he said.

British Medical Journal editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee warned that the review left unresolved important questions about effectiveness of the drugs.

"Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge," she said.

Roche has estimated sales of 1.6 billion pounds this year alone from the drug, the statement said.

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Brazil starts exploitation of major oil reserves

A welder on the job in the shipyard of Angra Dos Reis, Brazil, where workers are building enormous oil platforms that will feature 14,000-ton decks the size of football fields.

Once the offshore pools of oil are tapped, Brazil's proven oil reserves are expected to double. (Juan Forero/the Washington Post)

The challenge facing Brazil's state-controlled energy company, Petrobras is huge: developing a group of newly discovered deep-sea oil fields that will catapult this country into the ranks of the world's petro-powers.

The oil pools are 200 miles out in the Atlantic and more than four miles down, under freezing seas, rock and a heavy cap of salt.

Petrobras has launched a five-year, $174 billion project to provide platforms, rigs, support vessels and drilling systems to develop tens of billions of barrels of oil. Energy officials here project that Brazil, over the next decade, will have one of the world's biggest oil reserves.

"It's going to change the role of Brazil in the geopolitics of oil," Petrobras's president, José Sergio Gabrielli, said in an interview at the company's headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. "We are going to become a much bigger producer."

Petrobras estimates that production in Brazil could reach 3.9 million barrels by 2020, up from more than 2 million a day now. Proven oil reserves would rise from 14.4 billion barrels to more than 30 billion barrels, according to government estimates, putting Brazil in the same league as such major oil exporters as Qatar, Canada, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.

The new discoveries in Brazil's offshore "pre-salt" region do not mean that the country will become a major exporter of crude, according to Gabrielli. He noted that Brazil's economy, which is the world's eighth-largest and is steadily growing, is expected to consume much of Petrobras's projected production.

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Exploitation of oil off the Falklands Islands, is imminent

Falklands' oil quest takes off

Stanley, Falkland Islands (UPI) Nov 30, 2009
The Falkland Islands' quest for potentially vast quantities of hydrocarbons offshore has taken off with an exploratory drilling season after operators raised enough cash to lease a rig from Scotland.

The semisubmersible Ocean Guardian rig, in operation in the North Sea for well over 20 years, was leased by Desire Petroleum as part of an ambitious plan to explore reserves in the North Falkland Basin. Experts have said the basin could have very large reserves that could transform the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory that was the scene of a 1982 war between Britain and Argentina, into an oil-rich nation.

Industry sources said a tug boat, Maersk Traveler, is hauling the rig from its Scottish Highlands deepwater home to the Falklands. Current estimates said the rig could be in place within two months, or slightly longer if it faced rough weather on its trans-Atlantic journey.

U.K.-based Desire Petroleum said it had launched the exploratory operation on the basis of expert estimates the basin floor may be holding more than 3.5 billion barrels of oil and more than 9 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Although no commercial discoveries have been made in the Falklands, exploration ventures go back to 1998, when six wells were drilled to the north of the islands. The drilling revealed the presence of a rich organic source rock that, estimates then said, could hold up to 60 billion barrels of oil. Although that estimate has not been scaled down, recovery of those quantities of oil may require huge investments over a long period, analysts said.

The Falklands government has put in place new environmental legislation in response to protests from campaigners who believe the arrival of oil could ruin the islands. The Falklands have a thriving tourism industry

, mainly because of their main attraction -- penguins -- but officials point out the earnings from foreign travelers do not compare with a potential oil bonanza.

Chinese Hackers Exploit Microsoft Internet Explorer Weakness!

Symantec, Sunbelt Software and SANS' Internet Storm Center (ISC) increased their threat level warnings yesterday, after Microsoft announced that attackers were exploiting a bug in an ActiveX control used by Internet Explorer (IE) to display Excel spreadsheets.

There is no patch for the vulnerability, nor will Microsoft release one later today when it issues its July batch of patches.

Temporary Fixes
A temporary fix that sets the "kill bits" of the ActiveX control is available, but experts believe it's likely most users won't take advantage of the protection.

Threat Ranking
Symantec raised its ThreatCon ranking to the second of four steps. "We're seeing it exploited, but currently on a limited scale," said Ben Greenbaum, a senior researcher with Symantec security response.

Sunbelt Ranking raised
Sunbelt also bumped up its ranking, to high, the company noted today. "We just set the Sunbelt Threat Level to high since our researchers and at least two other major organizations have found in-the-wild exploit code," said Tom Kelchner, malware researcher with the Florida-based firm.

ISC at Condition Yellow
Meanwhile, the ISC went to condition Yellow after discovering numerous sites hosting attack code. The ISC reported both broad and targeted attacks using exploit code against the new zero-day. "[There was] a highly-targeted attack against an organization earlier today who received a Microsoft Office document with embedded HTML," said the ISC in a frequently-updated blog post. "This one was particularly nasty.... It was specifically crafted for the target, with the document being tailored with appropriate contact information and subject matter that were specific to the targeted recipient."

China sites Compromised
Broader attacks are originating from compromised sites in China, the ISC added. "A .cn domain [is] using a heavily obfuscated version of the exploit, which may become an attack kit (think MPACK), and is similar to recent DirectShow attacks," said the center.

Unpatched Microsoft Bug
Last week, Microsoft confirmed that hackers were exploiting an unpatched bug in an ActiveX control that's part of DirectShow, a component of the DirectX graphics platform within Windows.

McAfee confirm attack code targeting
McAfee echoed the ISC late on Monday, confirming that attack code targeting yesterday's ActiveX bug has been added to a Web exploit toolkit and is being distributed from hijacked Chinese sites. The toolkit also contained attack code for last week's DirectShow vulnerability. Some computers in Spain, the U.K. and Germany also showed evidence of compromises, McAfee researcher Haowei Ren said in an entry to the company's security blog.

Early Days
Symantec's Greenbaum added that while his company is seeing only a small number of attacks currently "It's not in the top 500 attacks," he said. This has the potential to get big, and big quickly. "It's the kind of attack that can be very easily hosted on a Web server, and meets all the criteria for large-scale attacks in the relatively near future," Greenbaum said.

The number and diversity of attacks will likely increase because working exploit code is publicly available, he said.

Microsoft Patch
Although Microsoft is working on a patch for the new vulnerability, it's unclear when it will be ready. Users will definitely not receive any automatic protection today, however.

"Unfortunately, the comprehensive update for this vulnerability is not quite ready for broad distribution," a company spokesman said yesterday afternoon. "We recommend that customers follow the automatic 'Fix It' workaround ... to help secure their environment against this vulnerability while we finish up development and testing of the comprehensive update."

Manually Steer Browser
Fix It requires users to manually steer their browser to Microsoft's support site and download, install and run the tool to disable the ActiveX control.

That means many users won't currently be protected. "Most users won't [manually] mitigate," agreed Greenbaum. The message is clear 'Don't be in this vulnerable group.'

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